Holding the Runner

Last week, I took a look at minor league catchers to try to determine who did the best job of controlling the basepaths. I noted in that article that it didn’t control for all the variables involved: notably, I didn’t take into account the skill of each pitching staff. Just like catchers, pitchers have control over the running game, and some of them are much better than others.

With that in mind, let’s turn to the guys on the hill. When evaluating prospects, a hurler’s skill at holding runners on base is, admittedly, a low priority. It’s the sort of thing that seems like it could be taught, and even if it couldn’t, a great pitcher can afford to give up a few extra bases because he doesn’t pitch very well out of the stretch.

However, that doesn’t mean we should ignore the topic entirely. Not only does evaluating pitcher skills allow us to more accurately analyze catcher skills, but it gives us some insight into what pitching prospects bring to the table.

If you read last Friday’s article, you may recall that I used three main statistics to gauge how well catchers managed the running game. I’ll use those again for pitchers, so let’s quickly review:

Stolen base percentage (SB%): This is the familiar statistic used for baserunners, as well, calculated as stolen bases divided by attempts.

Attempts per inning (ATT/I): This attempts to measure whether baserunners think they have a chance, on the assumption that a catcher with a good (and well-respected) arm won’t be challenged. The same can be said of pitchers who have deceptive pickoff moves or have a quick move to the plate.

Stolen bases per inning (SB/I): This combines the previous two stats into a single number: how many stolen bases does the pitcher (or catcher) allow per inning?

For the purposes of this article, I’m looking only at those pitchers who tossed at least 80 innings last year. In addition, I didn’t combine stats from multiple levels, so only single-team lines are included. That excludes a fair number of pitchers, including several notable prospects, but it leaves the vast majority to be measured.

Using these numbers for pitchers

Because catchers have such an impact on the running game, the statistics I’ve mentioned need to be adjusted for pitchers. A pitcher is much more likely to have more success preventing steals with Kurt Suzuki behind the plate than he will throwing to J.R. House. That, however, doesn’t tell us anything about the pitcher’s skill.

With that in mind, I looked at every minor league pitcher and determined the aggregate skill level of their catchers. To take a hypothetical example: let’s say Yovani Gallardo pitches 150 innings next year: 75 to Mike Rivera and 75 to J.D. Closser. If Rivera throws out 40% of baserunners and Closser throws out 30%, Gallardo would be expected to see 35% of baserunners caught on his watch. If, say, 42% of attempted steals were stopped with Gallardo on the hill, we could say that he is above average. For good measure, I repeated the process for the other two stats, attempts per inning and stolen bases per inning.

There’s one more variable to take into account. Lefthanders have a distinct advantage over righthanders, since they face first base. Accordingly, it’s not really a fair fight. I hesitate to adjust the numbers to make them equivalent, because I’d much rather see the actual performance of each pitcher. With that in mind, I’ve kept them separate, and will present them as such in this article.

As with catchers, there’s more than one way to measure a pitcher’s control of the running game, which is why I’ve used multiple statistics for this project. The most obvious approach is the one in the example above: compare each pitcher’s stolen base percentage to the “expected” stolen base percentage determined by his catchers. Here are the best righthanded pitchers, as determined by this difference:

Making runners stay put

It’s all well and good to have a low stolen base percentage. In the long run, however, it’s more impressive if most baserunners don’t see the point in trying at all. To measure this, we can compare actual attempts to the number of attempts that would be expected given the aggregate skill of the pitcher’s backstops. To avoid letting innings pitched determine the outcome, we can divide the result by innings.

For example, if Nick Adenhart pitches 100 innings and allows 15 stolen base attempts, while the skill level of his catchers would suggest that he “should” have allowed only 12, Adenhart’s difference would be -3. Divided by innings, his result would be -0.03. For this measure, here are the best righthanders:

Putting it all together

As promised, there’s a way to aggregate these two stats. The ultimate goal with regard to baserunners is to keep them in one place. If the opportunity arises, it’s great to gun them down, but it’s best if they don’t even think about trying. Using the same methodology described for attempts per inning, here are the best righties as measured by stolen bases per inning:

What about pickoff moves?

An important part of a pitcher’s arsenal is his array of pickoff throws. They certainly play a large part in keeping runners in one place. I suspect that most of the effect of a good pickoff move shows up in the stats above: if runners don’t know when you’re going to throw, they won’t stray very far from their base, and they won’t get a good enough jump to try anything.

However, pickoffs are just as valuable as caught stealings, and there are doubtless some pitchers who are more adept than others. A season’s worth of minor league data is of questionable value in determining who those are. But just for kicks, let’s take a look at which pitchers recorded the most successful pickoffs on a per-inning basis. First, righthanders:

Top prospects

There’s no particular rhyme or reason to this list. I just included those pitchers who are highly touted or interesting to me. For each of those pitchers, I’ve given their results for each of the statistics discussed above. Remember that this study is limited in that I didn’t combine results from different levels, and there’s an 80 IP minimum. That means that very few relivers are included, and numbers for many of the very best prospects, including Philip Hughes, Homer Bailey, and Matt Garza, aren’t available.